Realizing Victim Feminism

You know, Jason, you may have just coined an important phrase: Victim Feminism.

The meaning would be simply: Anyone who seeks to paint women as perpetual victims.
That would include politicians like Rob Hulls, whose increasingly activist court system in Victoria is illegitimate when accepted standards of western law are considered.
It would include the women who use the legal structure that condemns men to the role of Abuser and women to the role of Victim for political or financial advantage.
And it would include any person who seeks to gain financially or politically from this disgusting disinformation campaign.
It would include those who are willing to hold children and law hostage.

These people are not Feminists. Most feminists find assigning the role of Victim to women repulsive. --Audrie was quick to point that out--. But they do need to be identified by some sort of label, and I think you just found it.
They are not Feminists. They are people who are exploiting the perception of women as victims for their own advantage.
They are simply opportunists.
Opportunists who are destroying families for their own selfish interests.
Opportunists who are making the good efforts of sincere feminists, even some "radical" feminists, into an institutionally supported form of PAS. (Me)

Here’s some more evidence: During the ’90s, I taught a course in sexual bargaining at a very good college. Each year, after the class reviewed the low rewards for child-care work, I asked how the students anticipated combining work with child-rearing. At least half the female students described lives of part-time or home-based work. Guys expected their female partners to care for the children. When I asked the young men how they reconciled that prospect with the manifest low regard the market has for child care, they were mystified. Turning to the women who had spoken before, they said, uniformly, “But she chose it.” http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=10646
From Homeward Bound By Linda Hirshman The American Prospect Issue Date: 12.20.05“Choice feminism” claims that staying home with the kids is just one more feminist option. Funny that most men rarely make the same “choice.” Exactly what kind of choice is that?

Boundaries

Like so many issues in life, Victim Feminism is a boundary issue. Boundaries mean: This is what I am responsible for – and that’s what someone else is responsible for, maybe you.
I realize that my thinking is a little different than most people. I’ve learned to live with that. You see, I saw Feminism as the cure for co-dependency. Co-dependency is all about boundaries. Not dependency, co-dependency.
A person with clearly defined boundaries takes responsibility for the results of their choices.
A dependent person who still is aware of boundaries feels gratitude. A co-dependent person never has any need for gratitude: in their world view, they are entitled.

One of my favourite examples is driving through a neighbourhood.
You’re driving at the speed limit, alert and aware, not drunk, and some kid jumps out from between a couple of cars. You hit him.
You don’t run around telling everyone near you how defensively you were driving, or that you’re a good driver. -- That’s what a co-dependent does. He or she looks to everyone around them for validation first.
You go to the kid and help him. Cover him to prevent shock; check his breathing and maybe pulse; then you find someone to call for help.
Then, after he is taken care of, you explain how it really was just an accident, and that you didn’t mean to hit anyone. And no matter how well you were driving or watching, you take responsibility for hitting the kid.

I saw Feminism as the cure for that sort of thing. Instead, the most influential form of Feminism in the world today is totally co-dependent: Victim Feminism. Everyone is responsible for what a victim does.

Not a Victim

Reading along through the thread of discussion with Jason, I stumbled upon the phrase “Victim Feminism” honestly by letting my mind roam excerpts from Warren Farrell and the thread.

No feminist I know believes in this (feminism as lamenting the loss of the chivalrous good-old-days, albeit as hidden agenda) in their own lives.

In fact this sounds like the words of quite the opposite type of woman. Most feminists I know are into sharing home, work, economics, (and) responsibilities.

The women that depend on men for these things are oppressing, just as men who believe in them are. Feminists are generally women who want the way cleared for equality as you do yourselves so they can get on and live their own lives and achieve their own goals aspirations and life paths.

Women that are in dangerous relationships don't gain from seeing themselves as a victim. They gain by taking assertive action to get out of the relationship, getting economic independence, and taking control of their lives.

The same can be said for men in dangerous relationships. Let them go. (– Audrie in response to Jason from the same thread, editing added for easier reading)

One of the most telling things anyone did for me when I was facing the injustices of the Intervention Order process was to say: You chose to stay.
I was a mass of raving anxiety and depression. After two years of struggling with a massive DVT that threatened to take my leg or my life; fighting against the pain of a deteriorated hip; and enduring the increasing ridicule and abuse, segregation and isolation, from those closest to me, then being hit with the ignorant prejudice of the Intervention Order process. -- I was a wreck.
Psychologists pronounced me in writing unable to make decisions. Doctors fed me pills. (I do not believe in pills to 'cure' reactive mental conditions.)
But the thing that sent me on the road to recovery, -- which was still a long time coming – was one friend. She said to me: You chose to stay.
I did.

I can say it was out of love; or my faith in myself that my own character would show its worth in the end; or out of fear of failing; or because in my weakened condition I had no place else to go and that was my own home, but all of those statements – And the many others that I can try to make valid. – are just excuses.
I did choose to stay.
When she said that to me I stopped and stared.
At first, I wanted to tell her how cruel that statement was. I didn’t. I wanted to tell her all the reasons I had to stay. I started to, but the words were hollow in my own throat.

As terrifying as those words were, they calmed me. They took away my need to vent. They left me dizzy with thoughts roaring through my mind.
I began to draw boundaries. What was I responsible for. Where had I made mistakes. I began to assess my own decisions. And I began to see what I was not responsible for.